But, a few years ago, Parks decided to stop deferring his dream of writing crime fiction and the result was "Faces of the Gone," which won two of the top prizes in the mystery writing field -- the Nero and the Shamus.

Parks is back with a follow-up novel, "Eyes of the Innocent," which once again draws us into the life of a Newark newspaperman, Carter Ross, as he investigates murders connected to sleazy real estate practices in the New Jersey city.

Parks lives in the Washington, D.C., area now, but he returned to Fairfield County last week for a signing at Books on the Common in Ridgefield.

In an interview before his local appearance, Parks said he has already written the third and fourth entries in the Carter Ross series.

The author has enjoyed using his experiences in journalism and in Newark as a backdrop for crime fiction.

"My intention is to keep writing about Carter Ross as long as people want to read about him ... there is almost no end to the stories you can tell about Newark," he said.

Like the Connecticut metropolises in the shadow of New York City, Newark is surrounded by tony suburbs which make the urban decay all the more dramatic.

"It's an incredibly rich tapestry of different ethnicities, religious groups. Pick an issue and it's there in that city," the writer said.

The first Carter Ross novel was about a quadruple homicide. The new book digs into the impact of the subprime mortgage crisis of 2008 on poor people in the city.

After a suspicious fire leaves two children dead, Carter is assigned to do a follow-up story.

Soon, the reporter is investigating a shadow world of urban house-flipping and its associated political corruption.

"By choosing Newark, I knew that my character would never run off to Istanbul or get involved in other international intrigue, but there are so many good stories you can tell there," Parks noted.

"One of the things I've discovered about Carter is that he gives me a classic noir set-up," the writer said of the urban mystery genre that pits a basically good man against the dark forces all around him.

"You need a character who can be invested in mysteries and a journalist has all of the excuses he needs, because he writes about them for a paper," Parks noted.

"Eyes of the Innocent" explores the crisis in modern newspapers as well as the criminal case Carter writes about. Cutbacks at the Newark paper have produced an influx of poorly paid interns who Carter has to take under his wing.

"That's the modern reality of news. I watched it happen at The Star-Ledger. Every time some 55-year-old reporter walked out the door and was replaced with a 22-year-old, we lost some (of the paper's) institutional knowledge," Parks said.

"I still love journalism and, more to the point, Carter Ross loves journalism. He's a completely idealized version of myself," Parks admitted.